So I am just back from 14 days in Japan. Interesting to be on the sidelines as 3,000 Japanese police protect the olympic toarch from what I thought would be a calm, reserved crowd. Dont get me wrong, I was not in Nagano, I was in Shibuya / Tokyo.. but it got a lot of attention. Pro and anti China student groups and observers literally throwing punches, 70 year old Japanese men going to jail for throwing tomatoes in the face of the police protecting the toarch... etc. It was akin to what I saw in the USA when the toarch came thru California.

Friday night I saw The Battle in Seattle, a film about the WTO meetings in Seattle. It is a powerful look into the growing resistance to the WTO. The film left my friends and I feeling that we really ought to know more about the pros and cons of the WTO considering how moved so many people are to action by the negitive impacts of the organization.

Tonight I saw the hot new mockumentary The Green Chain at the film fest. The best part is that we used our 'private screening' tickets from Pat and Dan Conway's gig tonight to get past the ticket taker then re-appropriated our access rights to see this mockumentary that got started around the same time slot. To wrong the right... I offer up a nice plug:

Pacific Northwest is example of energy boom — and worried biologists

PORTLAND, Ore. - Wind energy may be emerging as an important alternative power source for the Northwest, but there are concerns about the danger to hawks and eagles as turbines expand to wild areas of the Columbia River Gorge.

By year's end, more than 1,500 turbines will be churning out electricity in the windy gorge. Until now, most of the projects have gone up in wheat fields — cultivated land that long ago drove away the rodents that raptors hunt. But as wind energy developers move into wilder areas along the ridge of the gorge, near canyons and shrub-covered rangeland, birds could be at risk from the 150-foot blades of giant turbines.

A snippet from Palm Beach Post on organic juice sales. Though I consume it in tandem with organic milk, organic juice availability just has not kept pace. Looks like they finally are waking up in the Orange belt. Tropica (worlds largest juice guru) only got into the game this Feb. See how behind the ball the big boys can be.Looks like it wont be much longer now. I wonder what is next?

I just uploaded the latest in a series of ultra-low-rez pollution centric "shock and awe" videos. Surf into Buckeye Sustainability Institute's blog, see the aerial photo of Sims Park, and watch the video of the pollution spewing out of an outfall there, a dead fish, and my 4 year old daughters observations.

I know all the readers will be deeply depressed to learn that for the moment the Coast Guard WILL NOT be creating live fire ranges to apply LEAD via bow turrent mounted magazine fed applicators to our great lake ( and source of drinking and love water). Now all you have to be worried about are schools of 'trojan fish' migrating from the cuyahoga river towards the 5 mile crib (intake for are drinking water). Anyway here's the skinny....

I saw some Forestry Stewardship Certified (FSC) timber products at Home Depot. 2 years ago they pledged to sell 40% FSC certified timber products. Last year 60%. The word on the street is that there is not even enough supply on the street yo.

In a striking change of direction the USEPA has decided to regulate an ever growing part of consumer culture.... pesticides built into our products.

As you may have noticed you can get just about anything these days in "antibacterial" form. Windex, socks, deodorant, zebart tidycar antibacterial car wash, hell even my keen sandals have "no odor footbeds" impregnated with what Ray Anderson CEO of Interface calls " Microbial Inhibitors". Dont be fooled fellow citizens for the fancy terms used in place of the regulatoraly defined word pesticide. That word, with all this organic food fan fair can cause negitive vibrations.... rightly so, maufacturers are shying away.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23, 2006- The U.S. Agriculgure Department has announced two proposed rules under the Federal Biobased Products Preferred Procurement Program, designating 20 items that must receive special consideration by all federal agencies when making purchases.

"The designation of these 20 biobased items is a major step in advancing the federal preferred procurement program for biobased products," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "When finalized, 1,500 biobased products will be given procurement preference by federal agencies, generating new economic opportunities for biobased product producers and U.S. farmers and ranchers, while providing new choices for U.S. consumers." Full text at the North Coast Green Spieler weblog

Fantastic new article on the World Business Council for Sustainable Developments website regarding biofuels that I wanted to make you aware of. It is freely available to those with internet access. If you dont have internet access, you dont know, unless you bring trees into the mix.